Systems and methods for connecting circuit switched voice communications between a caller and a callee are well known. In a traditional circuit switched telephone model, each participant has a separate physical connect to a central office, identified by a “telephone number”. This number can be referred to as a “public” number, because it is used either as a common or standardized identifier to connect a circuit, or as a caller identification.
One traditional method for obtaining anonymity was to employ an “unpublished” telephone number. This, however, had significant limitations: a potential caller could not contact a callee unless given the number in advance; but once given the number, the caller had permanent access to the callee. The advantage of an unpublished number relied on its secrecy, and once the secret was breached, the number was effectively public.
Another method for achieving anonymity or privacy is through the use of a disposable cellular telephone. This, however, can be costly, and suffers from significant limitations as well. In particular, the disposal of the cell phone results in loss of the telephone number, and thus this provides only a temporary solution, because the user must reestablish his number with all those wishing to contact him each time he changes to a different cell phone.
Anonymous telephone communications provide a number of advantages and market opportunities. See, “Anonymous Phone Calling: An Overview of Anonymous Phone Call Service Providers for the Consideration of Online Personals Companies”, Mark Courtland Brooks (version 1.0, Nov. 1, 2005).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,209, expressly incorporated herein by reference, provides a system and method for selectively adjusting the caller identification of a calling party based, in part, on parameters associated with adjusting the calling party. Security codes can be used in conjunction with a database to insure that the substituted ID is legitimate. The one embodiment or network-based predictive dialer is used to place calls for agents geographically separated from both the network and other agents. The network system instigates a calling campaign where remote agents are connected through the network to called parties and the called party receives the caller ID information pertaining to the calling campaign and not the caller ID of the agent.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,560,329, expressly incorporated herein by reference, provides an automatic call distribution system which routes calls from a communications network that provides call arrival data and a controllable routing capability. The system includes several agent stations, a call server, and a routing controller. Each agent station has a processor and a communication element to receive calls routed thereto. The call server uses telephony lines to receive the call arrival data and to direct the routing capability of the network. The call server has a caller prompting unit to request and receive information from a caller. The call server generates call information from the information from the caller and/or the call arrival data. The routing controller receives agent status data from the agent stations and the call information and selects an agent station from the call information and the agent status data. The routing controller causes the call server to direct the network to route the call to the selected agent station.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,688, expressly incorporated herein by reference, relates to an electronic method and apparatus for handling telephone calls. The method includes storing a telephone number template in a memory. The template preferably is as wide as a telephone number is long and identifies one or more telephone number digits by the digit positions within a telephone number field for comparison purposes. The method further includes monitoring a telephone line for a call placed thereon, identifying at least one of the origin and destination telephone numbers and storing one or more digits of such identified telephone number in a memory. The method further includes comparing the stored digits of the identified telephone number with the corresponding digits of the stored template. Finally, the method includes processing the call based upon the result of said comparing. Such processing may include any one or more of logging, filtering, blocking, ignoring, rerouting, forwarding, and distinctive-ringing and answering the call. The template may include a first-level mask-identifying digit position criterion that identifies dialing tokens of interest, and a second-level target-identifying digit content criterion that attempts to pattern-match those tokens of interest with corresponding tokens of stored telephone numbers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,696, expressly incorporated herein by reference, relates to a method and system for preserving caller privacy in an advanced intelligent network comprising a service switching point and a second service switching point. The service switching point is adapted to suspend calls directed to a predefined number and to forward signaling information associated with the call to the service control point. The service control point is adapted to alter the signaling information if a privacy restriction indicator in the signaling information is activated and to forward the altered signaling information to the service switching point. The method comprises: forwarding information identifying a calling party and any privacy restrictions on the calling party information from the service switching point to the service control point; and if the privacy restrictions indicate that the calling party information should not be delivered to the called party, altering the calling party information and forwarding the altered information to the service switching point.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,882,722, expressly incorporated herein by reference, relates to a virtual private communications network (VPCN) and method of managing calls on the network. Stations on a private communications network are identified by a unique private network identification (ID) code or a dial-in-direct (DID) number. Remote communications devices (e.g., cell phones, analog phones, etc.) are virtual client devices connected from a public communications network to the private communications network. One or more DID numbers are shared DID numbers, dedicated for the virtual client devices. Calls from the virtual client devices may be placed to network stations by dialing shorthand (e.g., 5 or fewer digits) numbers. Each call has a dedicated DID number temporarily assigned to it for placing the call as an in-network call. Once the call reaches its final destination, the shared DID number is released for temporary assignment to other virtual client devices.
In the present invention, a telephone number which is kept secret as described above is referred to as a private number. A telephone number which is published or generally known or ascertainable, is referred to as a public number.